It's around three o'clock when Rick is sitting in a corner of the pub he's staying at. He charmed the owner into letting him rent out one of the old rooms upstairs. He would have been long gone by now, but something about this place is keeping him here. It's probably the view of the coast. He's spent the last couple of days just walking up and down, reflecting. On what, he's never sure. Maybe it's just easy to lose himself here, forget everything else.

He turns the page of his book and continues to read. He's reread this book several times over the past couple of days; speed reading is a very handy skill to have. But he wants to take his time now, soak up everything in it.

In application of your principles, you must be like a pancartiast, not like a gladiator; for the gladiator lets fall the sword which he uses and is killed; but the other always has his hand, and needs to do nothing else than use it.

He stops and rereads that sentence again before he feels his phone vibrate in the pocket of his jeans. His brow furrows slightly and his eyes flick over to the clock above the bar, seeing that Alexis' should be in school by now. Something must be wrong, he thinks as he quickly digs out the phone. No one but Alexis has this number. He looks at the screen and sees it's an unknown number. He pushes a chuckle and shakes his head, shoving the phone back into his pocket and lets it ring silently a few more times before it stops.

He continues reading on when he feels the phone vibrate a single time in his pocket, indicating that whoever called him left a voicemail. He stops midsentence and grinds his teeth. He didn't want to be bothered. Maybe it's just a telemarketer who somehow got ahold of his number. He digs his phone back out and unlocks his phone, going through the motions of calling his inbox and puts the phone to his ear.

"Mr. Castle," an older male voice says to him, "I've been trying to reach you for some time. There's an urgent matter I need to speak to you about. I can't say anymore but I'm a friend of Roy Montgomery's, and it in-"

He quickly pulls the phone from his ear, a large, uncomfortable air sitting in his throat, and locks the screen. Without another thought on the matter, he shoves his phone back into his pocket, closes his book, drinks the rest of the water left in his glass, and stands up with a small adjust of his glasses over his eyes.

"Going for a walk, Alex?" Stacey calls from behind the bar.

He sends Stacey, the owner's eldest daughter, a warm smirk as he makes for the door. "Don't want you getting tired of me spending all day in here." He charms.

Stacey chuckles, "You're more than welcome to." Her accent makes his smirk a little less heavy. It's regional.

He shrugs, "Then let's just say I don't want you getting tired of my face."

"Could never get tired of that face, Alex."

He let's her compliment go through his ears as he pulls the door open and steps outside into the cool humid air. On a hard sigh, he starts the trek down to the coast, looking over his shoulder after he's passed a few buildings. He's felt watched all day. Once he sees that there's practically no one out on the sidewalk, he looks back ahead and keeps walking toward the coast line. After the familiar walk through the grass and over the hills, he arrives at a bench he sat down on his first time through here, overlooking a sharp cliff down to the ocean, with a never ending view of the lasting sea out onto the world.

He leans forward with his elbows on his knees and sees his glasses start to fog.

He didn't want to be pulled back into the dark, evil world that was Roy's past. All linked together somehow with just more evil and wrong-doing, every new stone for them to overturn just reveals more darkness, more voids where a person's heart should be. A part of him is tired of that world. That's why he likes it here. It's simple, the people are nice, it's open, pretty. There's a goodness to a place like this that New York lacks. Him and Gina always talked about moving out of the city to a town like this after Alexis was in College.

Then there's another part of him that just thinks about her; admires her for being able to stare down that world, uncover more and more darkness and come out on the other side unscathed, with her principles intact. She may lose sight of the demons and devils around her every once in a while, putting herself in more jeopardy than she realizes, but that's usually where he came in. In some lunatic way, maybe he actually served some kind of purpose in her life. The court jester maybe, the fool.

On a hard sigh, he reaches into his jacket and pulls her picture out of the inside pocket, deciding to get lost in what little of her beauty that camera could manage to take in. She deserves a good life, and maybe Josh can give that to her, without him constantly pushing her to do the impossible just because he likes watching her do it.

"I was wondering how beautiful she was." A gruff, but familiar, voice says behind him.

Castle is startled as his once raptured attention is ripped back to reality and he looks over his shoulder to see an eerily familiar man standing behind him just a few feet. With the man's dark green cargo jacket, his aged but alpha-esque features, it only takes a moment of staring at him before he recognizes him.

"You," he starts weakly, "you were in Rome."

The man takes a step and looks down to the grass. "I don't know if it's just hard-wired into the male biology," he starts as he comes around to the front of the bench, "to lose our better senses with incredibly beautiful women," he says and sits down next to him, "or if it's just in our genes."

Castle moves himself an inch or two away from the man that seemingly invited himself to sit down next to him with his hands tucked into his jacket pockets. "A-are you following me?" He asks, his mind crashing against itself harder than the tide at the bottom of the cliff face in front of him.

The man just looks over at him. "Call me Jack." He doesn't answer the accusation and simply extends his right hand.

Shaking his head slightly, double-taking, Castle is weakly shaking the man's hand, remembering himself before he replies. "Alex."

The man stares at him for a moment before his features left into a light smile. "You can lose the Clark Kent disguise, kid." He says as he's taking his hand back. Rick is startled for a moment, frozen. The man reaches up and draws an invisible circle around his eye. "The glasses only work in the comic books."

Rick's breath is caught in his throat, the humid salty air stuck in his lungs. After gathering what he can of himself, he pulls the square-rimmed glasses from his eyes. "You know who I am?"

The man reaches into his jacket, into a large pocket on the side, and pulls out a hard-covered book. "The world is too small for someone like a famous novelist to go totally unnoticed, I'm afraid."

The book the man shows him is Rising Heat, back cover face up where his bio and picture are. With everything he's been going through, he almost completely forgot about his new book release. There's a twinge of dread that he feels in his gut, hoping the man won't for some reason show him the dedication page. Dedicating the book to Roy will bring back emotions he doesn't want to deal with.

"So, you want to reintroduce yourself?" Jack says, setting the book down between them.

With another long sigh, Rick admits to his real identity. "Rick."

Jack nods, "Short for Richard?" He asks, almost rhetorically. Rick nods, along with Jack before he's continuing. "I'll call you Richard then. It's a stronger sounding name."

"I-I'm sorry," Rick shakes his head with a disbelieving chuckle, "but who are you and why have you been following me?" He asks, his fear gathering in his stomach together with his anger.

"I just want to talk, Richard."

Something about this man feels familiar, almost on a spiritual level. Like they have some cosmic bond that he's picking up on almost. It feels... almost frightening. "Look, Jack, I don't know who you are," Rick starts and stands up, "but I'm not exactly looking for a father figure right now."

Rick starts around the bench to leave the man behind before he's speaking again. "What about a father instead?"

Rick almost laughs at the man's attempt. "Just because you've read my Wikipedia page, don't think you can play me that easily."

His patience lost, Rick makes it around the other side of the bench where Jack still sits and gets two steps away before his voice is stopping him again. "Monkey Bunkey."

Rick loses his balance in the slippery glass as the words hit his mind. His heart feels pulled apart inside of his chest, his lungs feel drained, his legs feel weak. With a struggle to regain his footing, he is still storming back around the bench at the man who's still sitting down with his hands calmly in his lap, his eyes following him. "What did you just say?"

The man waves his hand in a circular motion. "Alexis, she had a stuffed monkey growing up, didn't she? Carried it to school in her backpack... that was its name, wasn't it?"

"Wha..." Rick tries, but fails at finding words. "Y-you..." he tries again and feels his spine swell with tangled nerves.

Jack presses on his knees and stands up. "You obviously have questions."

"Yeah, like just who the hell are you?" He rushes, not giving him a chance to answer before finding the rest of the questions swirling around his mind. "How do you know about Monkey Bunkey? How do you even know about Alexis?! What are you doing following me? What-what are you spying on me or something?"

The man's answer comes as calm as his demeanor presents him to be. "Well, it is what I do for a living."

Rick's eyes grow wide and he leans forward as his jaw feels slack. "Come again?"

"Did, I should say. I'm retired now."

What's left of Rick's breath to catch is pulled from him. The man standing with his hands hanging out of his jacket pockets just threw his entire life upside-down. "Do you really expect me to believe that my father is a sp... a spy?"

Jack takes a pause, seemingly deciding on his approach. "Have you ever heard of a black budget, Richard?"

"Yes, they're budgets given to the military, no questions asked, for classified..." his eyes soon meander back to Jack, who just lifts his brow.

"I'm one of the things part of that money goes to."

Rick feels an incredulous smile flash across his face. "You mean to tell me that my mother slept with the one guy in the bar who just so happened to be a military-paid black budget spy!?"

"I told you before it's in our genes to lose our better senses to incredibly beautiful women, Richard."

Breathing a breathy chuckle, Rick shakes his head and paces away from him. "All this time, I just figured she had a one night stand with some drunken vagrant and didn't want to own up to it but instead she slept with a spy, a spy!"

"Richard, I'm just an old man who scored high enough on the right tests, didn't have any parents, and is too old to be of any use now. Only reason you don't know about me is because I have too many state secrets to go home and too many enemies to stay in one spot for more than a week or so at a time."

Something about this man, it's... it's like talking to himself. The way he carries himself, the words he uses and the tone he says them in, how quick he is with his wit, even if this man isn't his father and he's just a liar, he's far too much like himself to be ignored.

After a moment, Jack continues. "And as far as the US government's concerned, I'm committing an act of treason even letting you know I exist."

"So... so why are you here then? Why now?"

His face and his expression suddenly shift into seriousness as he slowly starts to pace toward Rick. "Because you've dedicated two of your last three books to someone with the initials KB. Because you've spent the past three years as a civilian consultant to a Detective Kate Beckett of the Twelfth Precinct, NYPD. And because three months ago," Jack, now just a few feet away, reaches into his inside pocket and pulls out a newspaper, "that detective was shot by a sniper at a funeral for her fallen captain."

Rick looks at the newspaper, an article where her picture is above the article, in her dress uniform. And in a second, his conscience is thrown back to that hot, humid day that he's no closer to coming to terms with than he was the day he left.

"She was listed in critical condition for three weeks. And a few days later, your passport was used at JFK international airport en route to Singapore."

Jack shakes the newspaper in front of him and stuffs it back into his inside pocket, making Rick's eyes whip back up to Jack's piecing gaze.

"It's not watching your partner get shot that made you come this far away from home, Richard. Something happened that day in the hospital... something that made you doubt everything." Jack, matching Rick's usual rapier wit, or maybe even outmatching it, as torn the connection between his heart and his mind, making him stone silent and weak. "Because ever since then, you've been galavanting all over the north eastern hemisphere and something tells me you're no closer to going home than the day you boarded that first plane."

Rick feels small, his usual shored-up emotional armor feels ripped from his chest. "And why should I listen to anything you have to say?" He asks, a last ditch effort to give himself some leverage in the conversation.

"Richard, if you really had no intention of listening to me..." he holds his eyes for a moment, making sure he hears him, "you would have walked away by now."

Without another word, Jack sits back down where he was on the bench and silently waits for Rick to join him. And after not much thought, least of all the outcome, he sits down, pulling her picture out of his jacket pocket and handing it to him.

"What's her name?"

"You know her name." He retorts.

"I need you to say it, Richard."

With a hard sigh, his eyes drift shut as her presence fills his heart. "Kate... her name is Kate. And after she was shot, I went to go see her at-"

"Whoa whoa whoa, kid," Jack chuckles, handing the picture back to him, "you're a novelist, you should know better." Jack instructs. "Start from the beginning."

Rick breathes deeply and leans back. "I had just released my last Derrick Storm novel and I was at the release party."

A deep breath in, and she knows she doesn't feel ready.

She hasn't looked at this ring since before she was shot. Her dad packed what little she needed at her apartment and they had left straight for the cabin from the hospital, but he didn't pack her ring. He didn't think to look in the box where she keeps it. This ring used to drive her, used to motivate her. She used to swear to herself that she would wear it every single day until her mother's killer was behind bars or dead. But now, with its silver band and dark stone, it just feels heavy. Spinning on its chain, hanging from her hand, somehow it feels like an accusation. A cross to bear.

It used to remind her that she had a job to do, but now all it's doing is asking her a question that she's returning to work early in the hopes of drowning out. What does she really want her life to be?

She wasn't due to return yet. But she couldn't stand being at the cabin anymore. She's back on her feet. She just wants to get back into the swing of things, back to a normal routine.

And she can do it without her partner. Whether she has a choice or not, she can do it. A small part of the war going on inside of her is anger, furious at him for leaving despite what the circumstances where. They were partners and he said that he'd call her... that he'd be here, always.

The bell on the elevator dings above her, signaling her to put the chain back around her neck and hide the ring under her loose-fitting grey turtle neck. She swallows what nerves she can and steps out, adjusting the strap of her bag on her shoulder. She's just a few steps out into the precinct, her eyes down to the floor, before a soft applause starts to grow from the bullpen.

She looks up and sees all the eyes of the floor on her, with warm smiles and friendly faces, all greeting her return back to the Twefths murder division with a warm welcome. Kate feels a smile shine on her face as the first of the uniforms pass her by, shaking her hand. Maybe this is the feeling she needed. This place was her home before all this happened. This is where she belonged.

After a long few seconds, the applause stops and people go about their usual business. She makes it around the barrier and sees her friends grinning at her with their arms crossed, leaned back against Esposito's desk.

"I thought you weren't due back for another two weeks, Beckett." Ryan says, narrowing his eyes at her.

"You didn't have to cut your leave short just for us, you know." Espo cracks back.

"I know you missed us and everything, but come on." Ryan cracks after.

"Yeah," Beckett chuckles and moves around them, setting her bag down onto her chair, with her desk exactly the way she left it sans the massive pile of paperwork sitting on the edge of it now. "Well, two months in my dad's cabin, I got tired of listening to the crickets." She says and goes for her badge sitting on the edge of her desk next to her keyboard, clipping it on her waist band.

"Either way," Ryan starts on a sigh, "I'm sure you know then. We haven't gotten anywhere on your shooting."

Kate looks over her shoulder over to Ryan. "No, I uh..." She hesitates to get into it as she opens her bag, "I didn't know."

"Really?" Esposito asks, coming up behind Ryan. "I thought you've been talking to Castle, seeing as we haven't heard from the guy."

"Yeah, we could barely get him to leave the precinct while you were listed critical. Last time we heard from him was the day before you woke up."

"We figured since he had his partner back, he was working the case with you."

Kate's heart is torn between intense anger at her partner for leaving and that bear that now sits between the pillows of her couch back at her apartment. "Actually," she tries casually, "I haven't heard from him." She says, busying herself with rearranging the work on her desk. "I think he said something about just needing time err... something."

"Hmm," Ryan hums. "You sure he's okay?"

"Yeah, I mean," Espo starts right behind Ryan, "we were all there but Castle saw the lights go out."

"Guys!" She stops them, hoping to feign her way into getting them to think this isn't bothering her as much as it is by smiling. "Castle's been through worse and has come out just fine, all right? Don't worry, I'm sure you'll get your big brother back eventually."

They both smirk. "Welcome back, boss." They each chirp one after the other and move back to their desks.

She smiles, somewhat honestly after having to deal with the thought of her partner being thrown in her face. "Detective Beckett?" A female voice hollers across the bullpen. Kate looks up with her hands still dug in her bag on her chair and sees a woman in a pressed suit jacket and skirt, a pair of glasses hanging from a chain on her neck, leaning out of Montgomery's office. "A word in my office, please?"

Must be the new captain, she rolls her shoulders back and steps around her desk and walks through the vacant spot next to her desk, heading quickly into the captain's office. "You wanted to see me, ma'am?"

"If my mother shows up," the captain says, standing up behind her desk that's just as filled with paperwork as her own, "you can call her ma'am. Until then, however, you can call me 'sir' or 'Captain'." The captain looks up over her desk at her with a professional smile. "Captain Victoria Gates." She extends her hand.

Uncomfortably, Kate shakes it with a feigned smile. This isn't her captain. She seems the type to command authority, not respect. Leads through fear, not leadership. This isn't her office, this isn't her boss. "Nice to meet you, Sir."

"You too, Detective Beckett. I've been looking forward to meeting you." She smiles, pointing the end of her glasses in her direction. "Youngest ever to make detective. You beat me by six weeks."

Kate smiles, feeling a sudden hollowness in the victory she's being boasted for. It could be because she's been complimented on it so many times.

"You weren't due back for another two weeks, Detective."

"Just needed to get back in the swing of things is all, Sir." Kate excuses.

"Well, fill these out," Gates says and hands her yet another stack of papers, "standard psyche eval and you'll get your firearm back. In the mean time, you might want to get to work. I'm sure you have a lot to catch up on."

Whatever feeling she was hoping to get back by returning is a lost hope. She knows that and resigns to it as she makes for the door with the stack of papers in her hand and turns back to her desk.

But when her eyes catch her desk again, she notices something is off. "Hey, guys?" She asks the boys, looking over to their desks, "Where's the..." She trails off when they find their desks empty.

She won't be able to even get started until she finds it. She knows that. She sets the papers down and starts to move her eyes slowly around the bullpen. She'd know it anywhere. She's memorized it. When she doesn't find it in the bullpen, she checks the conference room, the break room, kitchen, even going to the supply closet and the locker room down the hall without success. She goes through a few more spaces, looking over everything again, before she hops on the elevator.

She has to find it. It has to be around here. She'd know it anywhere.

Realizing it's not on this floor, she boards the elevator and moves up a floor to narcotics. No one seems to pay much attention to her as she moves around their own bullpen, but as she passes their breakroom, she spots it.

And she's overcome by anger at where she finds it. Her fists clench, nails digging deeply into her palms, her throat already flexing with a yell as she storms into the three detectives who are joking around.

Another few minutes later, Kate is storming back out of the elevator, and she can already feel Ryan and Esposito's eyes on her.

Her heart gripped, locked just below her throat, her scars giving her a dull ache, her breath shallow and unsatisfying, she marches through the bullpen.

"Hey, yo," Epso tries quickly, trying to catch her before she gets too far, "what's going on?"

"Yeah, we just heard that you-"

"Not now." She keeps marching away from them, leaving the concerns hanging in the air as she turns cold-eyed into the captain's office, where she's already on her feet and furious.

"Detective Beckett, I demand an explanation as to why-"

"I quit."

In one swift motion, Kate pulls her badge off her waistband and tosses it down to her desk, her eyes never wavering away from Gates. Gates harsh lecturing is stopped on a dime, the only sound in the office being the clatter of her badge still rocking back and forth against the wood.

"Excuse me?" Gates asks, eyes narrowing as she leans on her knuckles.

"I quit, Sir."

"Detective Beckett, I want you to think very carefully about what-"

"I don't need to think about it, Sir. I've made up my mind." She says simply and starts backward out of the office. "I quit."

The boys are silent as she strides out of the captain's office, grabs her still packed shoulder bag as she passes it, and heads out... for the last time.

A/N: If you didn't get it, just check the reviews. I'm sure someone will get it eventually. C;